My Love and Hate of End User Computing

Tag Archives: End User Computing

Without sounding big headed I genuinely thought we had and in “some” areas still have one of the most modern desktop environments going (at a solutions level anyway). While I’m full of opinions I’ll always engage 100% with what’s around the corner even if sometimes past loyalties have to be moved to one side for the greater good.

But what was good for yesteryear is not always appropriate to move us forward.

Hello New WorldIt is with great pleasure to announce that we have entered into a 3 year deal with VMware for an Enterprise License Agreement for our entire datacentre and EUC stack – Horizon Mirage and View. This is part of a clear step forward for us as we rationalise/standardise our strategic partners moving forward and meet the growing demands of our Business and users.

On a personal level, this (the Mirage element) is something I’ve been working hard on for a long time and is finally coming to fruition – I’m looking forward to the next few months!

In addition to this we are drastically scaling back our VDI architecture (Losing our claim on the largest RemoteFX environment) to a deployment for 1000 CCU sessions using IBM, Teradici and Atlantis Ilio (Did I mention how cool Ilio is?). Why are we scaling back our remote desktop offering? What was wrong with it? Why we’re moving forward with traditional desktops? – These questions will be answered at Briforum UK (shameless plug).

BTW – View has come a long way since I last reviewed it… Looking forward to seeing how the elements of desktone and View are merged together in the future.

The ELA and new VDI environment are just a few of the many activities and projects under way that I will no doubt talk about in the future.

So that leads me too…

Goodbye Old FriendAs I’ve already said sometimes old loyalties have to be moved to one side and through all the excitement and great things we’re embarking on there is inevitably going to be a victim (or two).

My old friend in this case is Dell vWorkspace (formally Quest).

It’s no secret that I’ve always been the biggest vWorkspace fan boy, arguing why it’s a valid competitor to Citrx/VMware and promoting it at all sorts of events. I don’t think this will change. I truly think from a management/IT perspective it’s the best remote desktop solution going.

However… It no longer fulfils our Business and User requirements moving forward. There are some other “reasons” why we’re moving away too but I don’t think now is the time to share these – That would require a bar to be present 🙂

It’s been one hell of a time vWorkspace. I wish the remaining vWorkspace team (not many left now) all the best for the future

So why did I blog this? I know we’re observed by vendors and organisations as to what we do in this space. I felt I had to state that vWorkspace isn’t being retired because it’s a bad product. It’s just no longer has a place here and we’re moving on to bigger and better things.

The good news is that RES Automation Manager and Service Orchestration integrate just as seamlessly.

Again if you have integrated Automation Manager and/or Service Orchestration with VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop or even a good old sysprep deployment before then this is really nothing new.

Install the Automation Manager agent on the Mirage reference machine

Locate the agent in the Automation Manager management console and open its properties

Click on Prepare for Image and following the instructions (you can choose to run automation tasks when agents are first invoked).

Note that if you set a runbook/project to run when the Mirage client is “layered”, this job will run on every subsequent Mirage re-layering or layer update. – We found this useful in a hotdesk and/or student environment as we run delprof2 to clear any local user profiles or any profiles that didn’t remove properly (be nice if Mirage had an option to clean/remove local profiles).

Service Orchestration… Simple… Just install the Service Orchestration client on the reference machine, configure it to point to your environment.

So there you have it… Some more validation of how to combine the most exciting next gen deployment and management technology with the best user environment and system/service automation technology available today!

Fingers crossed our VMware Horizon Mirage business case is successful because I wouldn’t want to do it any other way!

RES Workspace ManagerSo we’re currently at the end of our pilot phase with Mirage and are now in that “anxious” Business Case phase. Like with any project you must set out clear success criteria. For us one of the key check boxes was compatibility with the RES product suite.

So the good news is that if you have integrated Workspace Manager with VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop before, it’s pretty much the same process.